I picked up a copy of Buckley's posthumous biography of Ronald Reagan yesterday afternoon.  Fabulous.  Let me give you two tastes.

The first, from the Introduction by Danilo Patranovich, who worked on the book with Buckley:

"Assisting Bill Buckley with this book has been the most stimulating work experience I have ever had.  Buckley was a brilliant writer and a penetrating and wide-ranging thinker.  He organized his ideas by putting them on paper immediately.  Whenever we needed to change the direction of the narrative or commence a new chapter, Buckley would open another WordStar file and start outlining.  He thought best by writing things out.  Sometimes I would produce a first draft or provide some background material for a chapter, but when he took the lead, he insisted I not read the material until he had fully drafted it.  Once an episode was finished, he would almost never go back to it, intending to postpone any revisions until the whole draft was completed."

From a Firing Line episode in January, 1980.  Buckley posed the hypothetical situation to Reagan - what would you do if you discovered that the unemployment rate jumped from 6 percent to 10 percent:

"Reagan:  Well, we would start with an immediate program of cutting income tax rates across the board for everyone, to provide incentive for individuals.  We would go after some of the punitive taxes and the tens of thousands of regulations which are keeping American industry from being as competitive as it could be in the world market."

Buy the book here.